Actor and director Justin Baldoni and the corporate he co-founded, Wayfarer Studios, have sued his It Ends With Us co-star Blake Full of life and her husband Ryan Reynolds, together with publicist Leslie Sloane, for $400 million in damages.

The swimsuit, filed Thursday within the federal District Court docket for the Southern District of New York, alleges civil extortion, defamation and a slew of contract-related claims concerning the movie It Ends With Us, which premiered in August.

The lawsuit is the newest growth in what has turn into a authorized battle following the manufacturing and launch of the movie. In December, Full of life filed a grievance to California’s Civil Rights Division alleging that she had confronted sexual harassment and different undesirable habits from each Baldoni and Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath, who additionally served as govt producer of It Ends With Us, on the set of the movie. She adopted up with a lawsuit, alleging that regardless of written agreements that the habits would cease and he or she wouldn’t be retaliated in opposition to, Baldoni and the studio employed a disaster PR agency that launched a “smear marketing campaign” in opposition to her picture, planting content material on social media and within the press “designed to eviscerate Ms. Full of life’s credibility.” Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath, It Ends With Us Film LLC and publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel had been all named as defendants in that case, and are plaintiffs within the swimsuit filed Thursday.

Baldoni, alongside along with his and Heath’s publicists and a contractor, have denied any harassment or wrongdoing and as an alternative paint the battle as a artistic battle for management of the movie between its two lead actors. That denial is available in a lawsuit they’ve filed in opposition to The New York Occasions, which reported on Full of life’s allegations in December. In a press release to NPR, The New York Occasions stood by their story, calling it “meticulously and responsibly reported.”

“It was based mostly on a assessment of hundreds of pages of unique paperwork, together with the textual content messages and emails that we quote precisely and at size within the article,” reads the assertion. The New York Occasions confirmed to NPR that they “plan to vigorously defend in opposition to the lawsuit.”

The lawsuit filed Thursday by Baldoni, Wayfarer and their publicists reiterates the argument that the battle with Full of life emerged from a artistic battle, describing how what allegedly started as a optimistic working relationship between Full of life and Baldoni took a flip all through the manufacturing strategy of It Ends With Us. The grievance alleges that little by little, Full of life leveraged her star energy to push for artistic enter past what’s often granted to an actor, together with by taking up wardrobe choices, rewriting scenes, creating her personal reduce of the movie and ultimately demanding that Baldoni be excluded from promotional supplies and occasions.

The lawsuit vehemently denies that Baldoni, Wayfarer CEO Heath or anybody else on-set engaged in sexual harassment or another inappropriate habits in direction of Full of life or her crew. As an alternative, it alleges that Full of life and Reynolds led a string of “extortionate threats” to tarnish Baldoni’s picture.

“This lawsuit is a authorized motion based mostly on an amazing quantity of untampered proof detailing Blake Full of life and her crew’s duplicitous try to destroy Justin Baldoni, his crew and their respective corporations by disseminating grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored info to the media,” Wayfarer’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, stated in a press release shared with NPR. “It’s clear based mostly on our personal all out willingness to offer all full textual content messages, emails, video footage and different documentary proof that was shared between the events in actual time, that it is a battle she won’t win and will definitely remorse.”

Along with Full of life and Reynolds, the grievance names Full of life’s publicist, Leslie Sloane, and the general public relations agency Imaginative and prescient PR – which represents each Reynolds and Full of life – as co-defendants. When NPR requested touch upon the allegations offered in Wayfarer’s lawsuit, Imaginative and prescient PR shared a press release on behalf of Full of life’s authorized crew that reiterated her preliminary allegations and added that Full of life was not alone: “The proof will present that the forged and others had their very own detrimental experiences with Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer,” they wrote.

“This newest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its associates is one other chapter within the abuser playbook. That is an age-old story: A girl speaks up with concrete proof of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser makes an attempt to show the tables on the sufferer. That is what specialists name DARVO. Deny. Assault. Reverse Sufferer Offender,” they wrote. “Wayfarer has opted to make use of the sources of its billionaire co-founder to problem media statements, launch meritless lawsuits, and threaten litigation to overwhelm the general public’s potential to know that what they’re doing is retaliation in opposition to sexual harassment allegations.”

Bother on-set

A big part of the lawsuit filed Thursday focuses on a doc Full of life included in her personal grievance: an inventory of 30 calls for for the set after the forged and crew returned following the 2023 strikes in Hollywood. These included:

• “no extra private, bodily touching of, or sexual feedback by Mr. Baldoni or Mr. Heath to be tolerated by BL and/or any of her workers, in addition to any feminine forged or crew with out their categorical consent,”
• “no extra improvising of kissing,” 
• “an intimacy coordinator should be on set for all scenes involving nudity and/or simulated intercourse”

In Thursday’s lawsuit, Baldoni and his co-plaintiffs argue that the manufacturing crew by no means obtained or agreed to this record; As an alternative, they allege they signed on to a 17-point record of calls for that, in accordance with the swimsuit, “was not open for negotiation,” despite the fact that the studio disagreed with the implication that inappropriate habits had occurred on-set and tried to make edits. They argue within the lawsuit, for instance, that an intimacy coordinator was already required on set.

“Wayfarer must signal the doc as-is, regardless of the falsity of its insinuations,” reads the lawsuit. “The choice was to lose tens of millions of {dollars}, price a whole bunch of individuals their jobs after that they had been out of labor for months, and destroy their relationship with Sony.”

The lawsuit claims that the record of calls for marked the start of “a fastidiously constructed paper path to destroy Wayfarer, Heath, Baldoni — and the Movie.”

In keeping with the swimsuit, Full of life’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, was not contracted or employed to work on the movie, however turned central to the manufacturing conflicts. In an interview with E! Information, Full of life shared that Reynolds rewrote a pivotal scene of the movie — which, in accordance with Wayfarer’s lawsuit filed Thursday, was information to different producers, as Reynolds didn’t have Wayfarer’s authorization. The lawsuit additionally describes a “traumatic” incident during which Reynolds allegedly berated Baldoni in entrance of Full of life, Heath, and others concerned within the movie, and alleges that Reynolds referred to as Baldoni a “sexual predator” and pressured expertise company William Morris Endeavor (WME) to drop Baldoni as a shopper. NPR has reached out to WME for remark and has not obtained a response. Although Imaginative and prescient PR supplied NPR with a press release on behalf of Full of life’s authorized crew, it doesn’t present any additional details about these allegations about Reynolds.

The “smear marketing campaign” that adopted

After the movie’s completion, Wayfarer alleges that the studio and Baldoni employed a disaster PR agency to not launch a “smear marketing campaign” in opposition to Full of life, as she claimed in her personal lawsuit, however “to be prepared in case Reynolds and Full of life unleash their wrath on them.”

Full of life beforehand alleged {that a} advertising plan created by the movie’s distributor, Sony, inspired the forged to give attention to the upbeat themes of the film, and that Baldoni and his crew privately pivoted from that technique to give attention to narratives of abuse as a approach to deflect in opposition to brewing hypothesis a couple of rift within the forged. Of their lawsuit Thursday, Wayfarer alleges that Baldoni by no means agreed with that advertising plan and that he and Heath regularly pushed to re-center the subject of home violence. NPR has reached out to Sony for remark and has not obtained a response.

Wayfarer’s lawsuit contends that the sexual harassment and “smear marketing campaign” claims are an assault from not solely Full of life and Reynolds, but additionally from the studio’s personal former publicist, Stephanie Jones of Jonesworks LLC (who isn’t listed as a co-defendant). The lawsuit argues that Jones was in an embattled working relationship with Wayfarer and Baldoni by the point It Ends With Us was launched, and that resulting from a private {and professional} battle together with her then-employee Jennifer Abel, she turned over personal communications between Abel, Melissa Nathan and Wayfarer to Full of life’s crew as “revenge.” Jones has filed her personal lawsuit in a New York state court docket in opposition to Abel, Nathan, Baldoni, Wayfarer and several other unnamed people.